humans re-considered

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the guardian publishes things like this, and you expect me not to vomit on it?

as for the Wall Street Journal all I can say is that if you were, at least, readers of the WSJ I might get a bit of variety in my diet, rather than endless canned horse.

I feel a hair-ball coming on.

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Cats Reconsidered

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Ok, ok; after reading this I have to confess to feeling conflicted. I'm still a cat lover but Toxoplasma gondii seems just too intelligent by half.

On paper, Toxoplasma gondii looks as if it ought to be the most famous parasite on earth. This single-celled pathogen infects over half the world's population, including an estimated 50 million Americans. Each of Toxoplasma's victims carries thousands of the parasites, many residing in the brain. As if that were not enough of an accomplishment, Toxoplasma is equally adept at infecting all other warm-blooded animals, as disparate as chickens and kangaroos…Cats play a major role in the parasite's success. They can carry it in their intestines, where they can produce egglike cysts called oocysts. A single infected cat can shed 100 million oocysts in its droppings. The oocysts can survive in the soil for over a year and can contaminate drinking water… Once Toxoplasma enters a host, it spreads quickly. Within hours it can be detected in the heart and other organs. It is even able to infect the brain, which is protected from most pathogens by a tight barrier.

Mercifully the article notes that: “For the vast majority of people, Toxoplasma causes no serious effects.”*

So I guess the cat stays in tonight after all.

However, I’m still somewhat concerned:

For decades, most scientists believed that people with healthy immune systems had no effects from Toxoplasma. But some studies in recent years have hinted that the parasite can exert surprising effects on behavior, at least in animals. In 2000, British scientists demonstrated that rats infected with Toxoplasma lost their fear of cats. They proposed that this strategy increased the parasite's chances of getting into its final host.

I wonder if Toxoplasma leaves a certain other species of mammal altogether too inclined to forgive their cat's faults…


*Toxoplasma can be dangerous to the immuno-compromised and to unborn foetuses.

In Defence of Cats

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On the other hand. Who could argue with a species which chases bears up trees.

This Could Only Happen to a Liberal*

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Our cat started making chucking up noises the other night**. So my partner grabbed the nearest thing she could find to place between cat and carpet. And it was a success: cat vomited on newspaper not carpet, and everything was happily-ever-after-esque. Or at least it would have been to were it not for the fact that the aforementioned paper was the Guardian Weekly (brand new). We tried to punish the cat by putting him outside, but he gave me that kind of look which said, “punish me, when you're at least partially at fault, that can’t be just”. So I relented and let him stay inside. Do Wall Street Journal Readers have these kind of problems? I suspect not…

*technically left-liberal
**which could be the result of over feeding stemming from redistributionist tendencies on behalf of the cat’s owners co-habitants.